As I wrote in a prior post, the Republican Party is in turmoil. New York Times columnist David Brooks agrees:
To put it bluntly, over the past several years, the G.O.P. has made ideological choices that offend conservatism’s Burkean roots. This may seem like an airy-fairy thing that does nothing more than provoke a few dissenting columns from William F. Buckley, George F. Will and Andrew Sullivan. But suburban, Midwestern and many business voters are dispositional conservatives more than creedal conservatives. They care about order, prudence and balanced budgets more than transformational leadership and perpetual tax cuts. It is among these groups that G.O.P. support is collapsing.
I would add two additional reasons: After holding power for twelve years, the Republican Party became arrogant, corrupt, and overly dependent on the evangelical Christians who comprise its base.
Lord Acton was correct: Absolute power corrupts absolutely, regardless of whether the government is liberal, conservative or moderate. The voters kicked the Democrats out of power in 1994 because they had become corrupt, and the same thing happened to the Republicans in 2006.
However, absolute power in government also caused the Republicans to abandon their traditional principles. They wanted to maintain power at any cost. They stopped being fiscal conservatives when they realized that they could funnel billions of dollars of pork-barrel projects to their districts. They forgot about their desire not to meddle in world affairs and began waging wars for oil and democracy.
The White House’s was able to implement its neo-conservative beliefs as long as the Republican Party could hold its base together, but now it is falling apart. Fiscal conservatives began to abandon the party for people like Ron Paul. Social conservatives started to desert the party when President Bush wanted to give amnesty to illegal immigrants. Evangelical Christians may form a third-party if the Republicans nominate pro-choice front-runner Rudy Giuliani.
Karl Rove’s so-called permanent majority is dying. In fact, it was never even viable. No political party or philosophy could ever gain such a stranglehold on a country as large and diverse as the United States.
